Modelling

I recently had the pleasure of meeting John & Vivienne Bristol from the UK's Deluxe Materials while they were traveling the USA and meeting with their distributors. Deluxe has quickly become one of our best selling hobby product lines because of their reputation for innovative, world class modeling products. John was showing me how to use some of the newer products they have when we came across Tricky Stick. When we first received this product I didn't give it much of a look, thinking it was simply a tacky glue and boy was that a mistake. What it is, is a surface primer for polythene and polypropylene plastics (and others) that allows CA glue (a.k.a. cyanoacrylate or super glue) to bond difficult shiny plastics. Tricky increases the versatility of CA as a glue and also improves it's strength.

Tricky Stick vs. Soft plastic figures (in this case Airfix)Ever since Airfix first produced their figures the issue of glue has been a problem. Airfix made their own brand glue, which was your basic polystyrene (model) cement. This worked well for the hard plastic that kits are made out of as it, but on the soft plastic figures it could not penetrate the surface and the bond was very weak. Since some Airfix figure sets, particularly the cavalry, really require gluing this was a big drawback to their product and these old figures defy assembling. Of course we now have an answer to this...Tricky Stick & Super Glue.

First up I tried gluing a Airfix cavalry figure from the 1960s to the horse and then the horse to the base. A dab of Tricky Stick on each piece. A drop of super glue, let cure (dry) for a few hours and...end of problem. Perfectly mounted and based cavalry!

Next up I hacked up a couple of Airfix foot figures, swaped the torsos, added a dab of Tricky Stick on each piece then a drop of super glue, let cure (dry) for a few hours and...2 minutes to a completely new figure

Michael Smith wrote on our Blog….I got my bottle a few weeks ago and can't recommend this enough! It's what I've been waiting for since my Dad brought home my first Airfix figures from a trip to England in 1965. So far I've used it with great success on Hat figures (both their original plastic and the more recent softer kind) as well as Airfix, Zvezda, and Italeri. Just be careful of the fumes.

But surely this stuff has been around for a while now ? The car industry for example, with the same properties ..ie; priming PA 12 / PE / PETP / PI / POM / PP / PTFE / MVQ / TPE etc for glueing with superglues ( Cyanacrylate) and in a lot of cases.. cheaper. I can get a 100ml of plastic primer for the Price the above is being sold for. Another case of the model industry discovering and repacking what´s available elsewhere and slapping a higher pricetag on it ?

Bluefalchion wrote:I understand Paul's concern, but I am still strongly considering buying some of the Tricky Stick. I love making conversions and this stuff seems to be formulated specifically for that.

What concern would that be? The modelling Scene has been using similar glue since 2014 at least..based on the glues used in the car industry etc

Objection ..?? Would suggest I´m against the idea..?Concern..?? Would suggest I´m worried about it ?Neither of the above. I´m not against the glue per se and I don´t worry about something that isn´t new. It was an Observation that the product has been around a while now and in it´s usage in industrie, cheaper to obtain. I´d be interested to see the production and or R&D facilities of the sellers of the paraphernalia connected to the Hobby, Particually the paints and glues.

Funnily, I found a source yesterday...at the amount divided by Price, it came out at roughly 0.5 US Cents (0.4 € Cents) per ml, so roughly €0.20 or $ 0.25 per 50ml. Ok, the bottles and Labels would cost a few Cents per unit more, but I reckon a tiny Profit may be possible . Printing press anyone??

Also, After reading a 1999 medical Report on cyanates and primers (interest in the health/enviroment risks etc and what else is there to do when the crickets playing on the radio) I found another source. Medical primer (polymer based primer) for superglues. Price around $15-16 per 50ml but this stuff sticks just about everything to everything else and permanently. If I remember correctly, it´s made by Scotch 3M and they´ve got a bucket load of different cyanates and primers for sticking everything to anything else, (using different primers with different glues..they´ve even got one that they reckon sticks all Plastics to other Plastics without a primer) and they sell in industrial quantities. Took a bit of digging about on the web but they were one of the sources for the above 0.4/0.5 Cents per ml.